Nucleic acid sequencing methods that involve separation of nucleic acid molecules in a gel, such as gel electrophoresis, have been in use since the late 1970's. A traditional method of determining a sequence of nucleotides (i.e., the order of the A, G, C and T nucleotides in a sample) is performed by preparing a mixture of randomly terminated, differentially labeled nucleic acid fragments by degradation at specific nucleotides, or by dideoxy chain termination of replicating strands, so called Sanger dideoxy sequencing. Resulting nucleic acid fragments in the range of 1 to 500 base pairs (bp) then are separated on a gel to produce a ladder of bands where the adjacent bands differ in length by one nucleotide. Advances in nucleic acid analysis technology have included novel fluorescent and chromogenic (e.g., non-radioactive) labels, non-gel based sequence reading technologies (e.g., mass spectrometry, image based methods using charge couple device (CCD) or video cameras, and luminescent nucleotides) and the use of nanopore technology to determine, for example, the sequence of a nucleic acid.